October 28, 2025
Dear U.S. Senators and Representatives,
On behalf of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, I write to you out of deep concern that the looming sale of TikTok to anti-Palestinian U.S. investors poses a significant threat to the free speech of millions of TikTok users. We urge Members of Congress to address the threat posed by anti-Palestinian billionaires, including Oracle Board Chair Larry Ellison, Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch, and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell, who have a clear agenda of purchasing TikTok to silence social media users who have criticized U.S. military funding for Israel and opposed Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The U.S. Congress should protect the free speech of Americans by condemning any terms of sale that enables the risk of Chinese disinformation to be replaced with anti-Palestinian disinformation by U.S. investors who want to silence TikTok users’ criticism of Israel. Members of Congress should issue clear and unequivocal statements condemning the takeover of TikTok by these anti-Palestinian billionaires and calling on the new owners to protect free speech.
After watching two years of U.S. military funding for Israel’s horrific genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, Republican and Democratic voters in the U.S. have experienced a sea change in public opinion regarding Israel. An April Pew Research poll showed that Israel’s unfavorable rating among Republicans aged 18 to 49 had risen from 35 to 50 percent. A September New York Times/Siena survey found that 54 percent of Democrats said they sympathized more with Palestinians, while only 13 percent expressed greater empathy for Israel. TikTok has been one of many places where U.S. voters have gathered to learn, share perspectives, and discuss the horrors of Israel’s genocide. Anti-Palestinian billionaires should be prevented from censoring this critical national conversation.
In April of 2024, the U.S. Congress and former President Joseph Biden opened the door to this censorship of hundreds of millions of TikTok users, including many U.S. residents and citizens, by passing and signing into law a version of the so-called “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.” The law forces the sale of TikTok by its Chinese owner ByteDance, under the threat of an outright ban. In the aftermath, negotiations have been ongoing between the Trump Administration and Chinese government for a sale of an ownership share of TikTok to U.S. and Western investors. On Sunday, October 26th, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed that the U.S. and China have finalized the details of a deal transferring a majority ownership share of TikTok to new owners. And on Monday, President Trump stated that he could sign a final TikTok deal as soon as Thursday of this week.
According to news reports in September of this year, this future majority ownership of TikTok is likely to be a consortium of investors, including anti-Palestinian billionaire Larry Ellison, via his company Oracle. Under the likely deal, Oracle will take control of the TikTok algorithm that determines what users see on the platform. Other investor names that have been reported include Lachlan Murdoch and Rupert Murdoch of News Corp and Fox News, anti-Palestinian billionaire Michael Dell, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and private-equity firm Silver Lake.
The transfer of ownership of TikTok from Chinese company ByteDance to Western owners means that TikTok will move from being a company under the influence of a Chinese government that is committing genocide against Uyghurs to being controlled by U.S. investors who want to silence TikTok users’ opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
A range of anti-Palestinian voices have made it clear that their agenda is to take control of TikTok and silence all criticism of Israel. At a McCain Institute forum in May of 2024, U.S. Senator Mitt Romney stated, “Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites — it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts.” Another voice that has implicitly called for suppressing TikTok users critical of Israel’s genocide in Gaza is the Jewish Federations of North America. The JFNA itself has engaged in clear genocide denial regarding Gaza, despite clear and overwhelming evidence of that genocide. In this context of genocide denial, it is deeply disturbing that the JFNA has called for new U.S. ownership of TikTok to “correct the algorithm that blocks honest and fair information about Israel and the Jewish people.” The JFNA’s Orwellian phrase, “honest and fair information about Israel,” suggests an ideological goal of controlling what narratives regarding Israel are shared on TikTok, to the exclusion of honest discussion of Israel’s commission of genocide.
Finally, there are the recent words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in Gaza. In September, he told a group of social media influences in New York, “You have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield, and one of the most important ones is social media.” Netanyahu described the sale of TikTok as “the most important purchase happening … I hope it goes through because it can be consequential,” he added. Netanyahu’s view is clear: he sees the sale of TikTok as a key element of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
Should anti-Palestinian billionaires Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, and Lachlan Murdoch become the lead investors in TikTok, the future of free speech on the platform is in doubt. Larry Ellison, Oracle’s board chair, is both a major donor to the Israeli military via the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces nonprofit organization and a close confidant of Netanyahu. Ellison and his family have already brought their anti-Palestinian agenda to CBS News, which they now own through a merger of parent company Paramount with the Ellison family’s media company Skydance. Following the merger, the Ellison family put anti-Palestinian ideologue Bari Weiss in charge of CBS News as editor-in-chief.
While serving as CEO of Oracle in 2021, current Oracle board member and Israeli-American billionaire Safra Catz stated, “I love my employees, and if they don’t agree with our mission to support the State of Israel then maybe we aren’t the right company for them. Larry (Ellison, co-founder of Oracle) and I are publicly committed to Israel and devote personal time to the country, and no one should be surprised by that.” Oracle ownership of TikTok is likely to result in promotion of anti-Palestinian propaganda on the social media site, along with suppression of criticism of Israel.
In addition to Ellison and Oracle, the other anti-Palestinian billionaires who are likely to be involved with this deal also deserve scrutiny. The Murdoch family’s record of anti-Palestinian propaganda and news distortion via Fox News is well-documented. Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Technology is a strong advocate for the Israeli government who has remained silent on Israel’s genocide in Gaza. His company, Dell Technologies, has provided millions of dollars in support to the Israeli military. Dell Technologies subsidiary EMC Israel Advanced Information Technologies has been documented as the main provider of data storage systems to the Israeli military. He has also been a party to private conversation threads focused on suppressing pro-Palestinian speech at Columbia University.
Finally, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and private equity firm Silver Lake have both previously been named as likely TikTok investors under the deal. Andreessen Horowitz has made extensive investments in both Israeli startups and former Israeli military leaders and officers. One example is Toka, an Israeli defense technology startup co-founded by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and former Israel Defense Forces cyber chief Yaron Rosen. One of the company’s products enables governments to hack into security cameras and alter the footage they have captured.
When billionaire anti-Palestinian investors and ideologues take control of TikTok, the risk is clear: suppression of TikTok users and content that are critical of Israel and oppose Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and genocide of Palestinians. Indeed, the TikTok algorithm will likely be retrained to suppress those very voices. This in turn will deprive millions of U.S. citizens of the robust debate that is necessary to ensure that U.S. foreign policy is not beholden to a foreign government that engages in crimes against humanity.
Even before the takeover of TikTok by anti-Palestinian billionaires, TikTok had already begun taking steps to silence users who have criticized Israel. In July of 2025, TikTok hired Erica Mindel, a former Israeli soldier with a documented record of anti-Palestinian politics, to monitor user speech on the platform. Given the Israeli military’s long record of propaganda, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, especially towards Palestinians, no former Israeli soldier should be given the power to police TikTok users’ speech.
The future agenda of TikTok’s likely new owners is clear: to retrain the TikTok algorithm so that public criticism of Israel by TikTok users is hidden from broader view. Americans must have the freedom to use social media to oppose U.S. military support for Israel. That is why the U.S. Congress must address the threat to freedom of speech posed by the takeover of TikTok by anti-Palestinian investors. Members of Congress should issue clear and unequivocal statements condemning the takeover of TikTok by these anti-Palestinian billionaires and call on the new owners to protect free speech.
Sincerely,
Sunjeev Bery
Strategic Campaign Director
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)